Since the mid 1980s, Mark Dion has created sculptures and installations that serve as critiques of institutional power structures, questioning notions of the representation of nature, display, codification, and collecting. Dion’s new sculpture Concerning the Elephant Bird includes a large glass egg blown by a master glass blower and a cast made from a real elephant bird specimen atop a sumptuous pile of found objects set into tar. The now extinct elephant birds once lived off of the coast of Madagascar, and it is widely believed that their extinction resulted from human activity. The eggs of this wondrous and storied animal are the largest known bird egg, with a bulk 15 times larger than an ostrich egg and 10,000 times larger than a hummingbird egg. A longtime environmentalist, Dion’s work acknowledges the repercussions of the human impulse to dominate nature.
